A priest in a South Carolina church has caused ripples by denying communion to the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Former Vice-president and lifelong Catholic, Joe Biden, was campaigning in South Carolina on Sunday, and attended 9am mass at St. Anthony’s Church in Florence.
However, parish priest Fr. Robert Morey denied him communion because of his public support for abortion rights.
Fr Morey, who was a lawyer for 14 years before becoming a priest, said Holy Communion “signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church”.
“Our actions should reflect that. Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching,” the priest added.
While Christians in Iraq and Syria suffer in the aftermath of Islamic State genocide, a new “hot spot” of persecution has emerged in South and East Asia, a recent report finds.
“The situation for Christians has deteriorated most in South and East Asia: this is now the regional hot spot for persecution, taking over that dubious honour from the Middle East,” stated a report on global Christian persecution by the group Aid to the Church in Need, a pontifical foundation that provides relief to Christians in 140 countries, including Ireland.
ACN released its biennial study of the global persecution of Christians last week. The 2019 report “Persecuted and Forgotten?” compiled information on acts of harassment, violence, and discrimination committed against Christians over the span of 25 months from July 2017 through July 2019; details on the persecution were gathered by ACN on fact-finding trips.
One of the report’s chief conclusions was that of all persecuted Christians, “Christian women suffer the most, with reports of abductions, forced conversions and sex attacks.”
The report focused on 12 countries where Christian persecution was most severe: Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Sudan, India, Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, China, the Philippines, and North Korea.
The opening of a new community school in a busy commuter belt area of Co Meath has been deferred because it did not enrol any pupils.
The Department of Education fast-tracked the construction of Dunshaughlin Community National School, run by the Education Training Board, earlier this year based on its demographic projections which indicated there was an urgent need for a new school.
However, the eight-classroom school did not open in September as planned, due to a lack of enrolments.
A teacher who was hired has since been redeployed, while a new school principal is processing enrolments for the coming year.
It was one of 42 new schools announced by the Government which are being built between now and 2022.
An employment gap between mothers and fathers widens within three years of having children, even though only half of men initially earn more than their partner, research has shown.
Researchers at the universities of Bristol and Essex tracked the employment status of 2,281 new mothers over three years and 1,199 mothers over five years for the study, undertaken for the government equalities office.
About 90 per cent of new fathers were working full time or were self- employed three years after the birth of their child, compared with 27.8 per cent of mothers. More men also advanced their careers through promotion: 26 per cent of fathers were in a more senior role five years on from parenthood compared with 13 per cent of mothers.
The academics found that women with degrees were twice as likely to return to work full time as mothers with lower qualifications.
A large study found that men were the main or sole earners in 54 per cent of couples a year before they had children, with 31 per cent earning equal amounts and women the chief breadwinner in 14 per cent of households.
However, three years after having children, men were the sole or main breadwinners in 69 per cent of families and fathers and mothers earned similar amounts in only 20 per cent of couples.
Serious consideration should be given to granting automatic guardian rights to unmarried fathers, an Oireachtas Committee has recommended.
The Joint Committee on Justice and Equality had heard evidence that family law conflict is often exacerbated by unmarried fathers not having automatic guardianship rights in respect of their children, even if their name is registered on the birth certificate. The report says, “Only mothers have automatic rights to guardianship in these cases and, by contrast, married parents are automatically joint guardians with equal rights in relation to the child. Not only does this ignore the realities of modern family life in Ireland, it also creates inequality in terms of parental rights and responsibilities; and this in turn often results in separating parents taking the adversarial route through court, leading to tension and conflict between parties, with the child caught in the maelstrom”.
Members of the Committee agreed with the view that unmarried fathers should be given automatic guardianship rights, though it was recognised that practical issues could arise, for instance, where a father is not involved, or does not wish to be involved, with the child. Automatic guardianship exists for unmarried fathers in Northern Ireland,
The Committee’s report on reform of the family law system, published on Thursday, makes 38 recommendations.
Christianity’s disappearance from parts of the Middle East can only be stopped if the international community acts now, according to a new report launched in Westminster Wednesday.
The 2019 “Persecuted and Forgotten?” report, produced by Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), warns of Christianity vanishing from towns and cities in the region, as – despite the defeat of Daesh (ISIS) – the impact of genocide has led to haemorrhaging numbers of the faithful.
There were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq before 2003 but by mid-2019, they had fallen to well below 150,000 and perhaps even less than 120,000 – a decline of up to 90% within a generation.
In Syria Christian numbers have fallen by two thirds since the conflict began in 2011.
The ACN report notes that the international community has shown unprecedented concern about the persecution of the region’s Christians, but failed to provide the aid required to ensure its survival during that period covered by the report (2017-19).
The Report also found that the persecution of Christians has worsened the most in South and East Asia – noting that, in 2018, 477 anti-Christian incidents were reported in India.
In the same region, 300 people died – and more than 500 were injured – in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday 2019 when jihadists bombed sites including three churches.
In a number of African countries Christians were threatened by Islamists seeking to eliminate the Church – either by use of force or by dishonest means, including bribing people to convert.
In Nigeria’s north and the ‘Middle Belt’ regions, militants continued a reign of terror against Christians and Muslims alike -3,731 Christians were reportedly killed in 2018.
While in other parts of the African continent, the main threat to Christians came from the state – over a 12-month period, more than 70 churches were attacked in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains with 32 burnt down.
A UK coalition of groups opposed to euthanasia has expressed sadness at the death of Belgian Paralympian Marieke Vervoort whose life was ended by euthanasia yesterday, but warns against changing the law in the UK.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, Chief Executive of Care Not Killing, commented: “It is extremely sad news that Ms Vervoort has chosen to end her life this way – But her death highlights how the right to die has become a duty to die in both Belgium and their near neighbours in the Netherlands.
“In these countries, laws which were only ever supposed to apply to mentally competent terminally ill adults have been extended and safeguards removed. Euthanasia laws in Belgium and the Netherlands now include those who are not terminally ill, disabled people, non-mentally competent adults, those with mental health problems, couples and even children.”
Care Not Killing is a UK-based alliance bringing together over 40 organisations – human rights and disability rights organisations, health care and palliative care groups, faith-based organisations groups – and thousands of concerned individuals.
Church leaders have joined their voices to a chorus of pro-life and pro-family groups in the North criticising the legalisation of a very permissive abortion regime and the redefinition of marriage.
In a statement, the Catholic bishops of Northern Ireland said the Westminster legislation had removed “all explicit protection for the unborn child up to 28 weeks of pregnancy”, creating “potentially one of the most liberal and unregulated abortion regimes in the world”.
Calling abortion, “a brutal violation of the precious gift of life”, they said, “[t]his is a tragic day for the unborn children who will now never bless our world with their unique and precious lives. It is also a sad day for our local democracy”.
On same-sex marriage, they said they are “also concerned at the redefinition of marriage which effectively places the union of two men, or two women, on a par with the marriage relationship between a husband and wife which is open to the procreation of children”.
The Presbyterian moderator Dr William Henry expressed his church’s “disappointment and regret” at the failure to restore the Executive before the deadline on Monday night.
“It remains surprising that some parties have been willing to allow the UK parliament to legislate for the people of Northern Ireland without consideration of the devolution settlement, and we are disappointed that the recall of the Northern Ireland Assembly today was dismissed by some as a political stunt,” he said.
The president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, Rev Sam McGuffin, said he was “deeply disappointed that our Northern Ireland MLAs have, through their inability to cooperate, allowed this abortion legislation to become law”.
“I wish to place on record my thanks to those organisations who have supported the right to life cause and would encourage them to continue in their efforts to bring about a change to this extreme legislation,” he said.
Young people of faith are less anxious and more optimistic than their nonreligious peers, a major new study has found.
In one of the largest global studies of its kind to be conducted, the Barna study, carried out in partnership with World Vision, examined the data of 15,369 people aged 18- to 35-year-olds across 25 countries.
It found that those who attended a place of worship on a weekly basis were less likely to say that they experienced anxiety (22%), compared with those who did not attend church regularly (33%).
While half of practising Christians (51%) said they felt “optimistic about the future”, this fell to a third (34%) among those with no faith.
Young people with no faith were more likely to say they often felt sad or depressed (28%) than practising Christians (18%), and they were also more likely to report feeling “lonely and isolated from others” (31% vs 16%).
While less than a third of respondents with no faith (29%) said they felt “able to accomplish my goals”, this rose significantly among practising Christians to 43 per cent.
Those without a faith were twice as likely as those with an active faith to say they felt “uncertain about the future” (51% vs 27%).
Two long delayed parts of the Child and Family Relationships Act will finally be commenced on 5th May 2020.
The announcement was made in the Dáil by Minister for Health, Simon Harris. The uncommenced sections of the Act regarded the legal parentage of children born to some same-sex couples. The Act became law in April 2015 in time for the same-sex marriage referendum. However, complications prevented its full implementation up to now.
Donation-conception is controversial because it involves a deliberate severing of the natural ties to at least one parent and may also involve deliberately depriving a child of either a mother or a father.
Meanwhile a new group has launched demanding ‘equality’ for children conceived for LGBTQ+ parents via sperm or egg donation.
Equality for Children say that many children of LGBT couples in Ireland are denied the right to have both of their parents legally recognised. They want this rectified in law.
